NOTE: So, I made a new friend through this story and she is @nochubungee and since she was SO SWEET to have PMed about this story on Tumblr I am gonna dedicate this here chappie to her~
And to all my readers too!!!
I am aware I that barely ever express my gratitude to ya'll but TRUST me when I say this: 
Your comments are my anxiety relievers. They make me smile. And keep me from ending it all! 
So please continue loving me and supporting me~~~

Jungkook lies awake under the canopy of the fake stars that Jimin had stuck for him in his bedroom ceiling on his birthday, as he replays what Taehyung had said in the living room a few hours ago.

And just like that, a memory filters into his mind.

Flashback

Taehyung grits his teeth trying to hold Jimin back from further destroying their bedroom as the elder friend continues to slam his fists against everything he can touch. It’s hard enough to keep Jimin steady, but Jungkook crying in the background doesn’t help either. Instead, Taehyung thinks it only makes Jimin all the more violent.

“Let go of me, Taehyung!” Jimin yells at him, almost elbowing him in the face as he pushes against the boy’s tight hold on his waist. “Let me ing go!”

Clenching his eyes shut, Taehyung pulls Jimin away from the curtains he’s trying to pull down and begs the boy to listen to reason. “Stop it, Jimin. Please!” As he pulls the elder towards the bed, he feels Jungkook tugging at the hem of his shirt.

Eyes wet and nose running. The boy doesn’t look like the fifteen-year-old he’s supposed to look like. He barely even looks like a teenager. Jungkook’s eyes that are desperately asking for assurance, tear Taehyung apart as he tries to rein Jimin in. “Jimin, you’re scaring Kookie. Stop it already!” He pleads once again, smiling urgently at Jungkook to get him to stop crying.

In the meantime, however, Jimin manages to get out of Taehyung’s hold on him and turns around abruptly, pushing Taehyung back and storming towards Jungkook. The elder of the three grabs Jungkook by the shoulders and shakes him as he demands, “how long are you going to keep crying, huh!? How LONG JUNGKOOK!?” And the way Jungkook cowers at the rise in the elder’s volume makes Taehyung’s heart burn with pure anger.

“He’s not doing it because he likes it dammit!” Taehyung yells from where Jimin had pushed him to the ground. Biting his lips angrily as he gets to his feet. Shoving Jimin’s chest as he speaks. “Why are you acting like an animal!? Stop yelling at him for crying! Stop thrashing the place to vent out your ing anger, !”

“And what do you suggest I do then!?” Jimin shouts back at him. His voice sounding like a death call. “Should I just sit around and watch him ing cry over the same damn thing OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER!? Huh!?”

He doesn’t know how to react to that so Taehyung simply continues glaring at Jimin. But try as he might, he can’t seem to project his hatred towards the boy’s behavior at him through his eyes. So shudders a sigh and closes his eyes as he bites his lips to keep his cool. “Getting angry at him won’t work either Jimin,” he mutters. Painfully aware that Jungkook has gone into another panic attack due to Jimin’s violent behavior.

Jimin clenches his hand into a fist and slams it into the wall right next to the Taehyung. Seething and glistening eyes that are rimmed with tears. “I can’t help it. It’s been two ing months already!” He growls, hitting his head against the wall. “I can’t help but ing get angry every time he ing cries or goes into a panic attack! I can’t just sit there and hug him, expecting everything to magically be okay. I can’t just watch him cry and wait for him to ing stop, Tae!”

Taehyung moves towards Jimin, ignoring Jungkook who’s turned into a fetal position in the corner of his bed and is rocking back and forth as he cries. Because Jungkook’s panic attacks are frequent but Jimin is seldom ever calm enough to listen to reason.

“I know it’s hard, Jimin” he begins, watching over Jungkook from the corner of his eyes, “but by yelling at him like that, breaking stuff, being violent like this… You're not helping him. You’re scaring him. You’re making it look like it’s his fault all this happened.”

Taehyung doesn’t elaborate himself after that and turns away from Jimin, walking back to Jungkook to help the boy out with his panic attack. The silence that engulfs the three is thicker than ice, punctuated only with frequent hiccups from Jungkook.

The elder friend watches Taehyung calm Jungkook down with sweet whisperings and a warm embrace. He looks over his friend feeding the younger boy and then tucking him to bed. And he wonders why he is unable of such warmth.

And as Taehyung is turning in for the night, Jimin stumbles into his friend’s bed, muttering about how cold it is tonight. And just as they are drifting off to sleep, Taehyung thinks he hears Jimin cry as he mutters sleepily, “I can’t see him cry, Tae.”

Flashback Over

Taehyung eyes Jungkook stirring in bed as he enters the younger’s bedroom, and just the way the boy is breathing shows that Jungkook isn’t asleep. He closes the door behind him and edges closer to the boy who's pretending to sleep and sits beside the boy’s legs as he waits for Jungkook to react to his presence. But when the boy doesn’t respond, he heaves a sigh and leans back on the balls of his hands, staring up at the ceiling.

“I know you’re not sleeping, Jungkook,” he says. And the first thing that comes to Jungkook’s mind is the lack of the use of a nickname. Taehyung never calls him Jungkook.

The younger boy shifts under the covers for a while, begging internally for Taehyung to move away. But when the elder boy doesn’t move, Jungkook bites his lips and sits up. Never looking into the boy’s eyes, because he’s scared of what he’ll see in them. Because, suddenly, he’s scared of Taehyung too now.

It takes too long before Taehyung starts speaking again, and during that time Jungkook almost starts crying again, “what’s the matter, Jungkook?”

“N- Nothing, H- Hyung…” Jungkook his lips, fear evident in the way his voice wavers and the sheets balled into his fists.

Taehyung watches Jungkook’s knuckles turn white with anxiety and he slips his hands on top of the boy’s, making him finally look at him. His eyes are glassy with the tears he had shed and they reflect Taehyun’s pain like a mirror. “Why can’t you just… forget, Jungkook? Why do you keep living in the past.” The boy sounds tired. Almost like he’s given up.

Jungkook his lips again and his doe-like eyes bulge out as he tries to come up with an answer to the question. “I- I don’t understand… What do you mean, Hyung?”

The other boy heaves a sigh. A restrained sigh that sounds exhausted and angry at the same time. He clenches his teeth and rolls his eyes, looking away from the young boy as if to direct his anger to some source other than Jungkook. “If you keep being this way…” he